A lot of people in my household, myself included, made some big mistakes this weekend.
Errors in judgment, poor behavior, it all seemed to happen. We all ended up with something to apologize to someone else for this weekend.
What a wonderful opportunity to practice grace, forgiveness, and (of course) responsibility!
The most important thing when a mistake is made: own it. “Yes, that was absolutely my mistake and I shouldn’t have done that.” Don’t make excuses. Don’t explain why you did it. Don’t introduce mitigating circumstances. Certainly don’t bring up ways the other person has made related mistakes in the past, or how they might actually be partially responsible for this one. Let me be clear: doing any of those things makes you a jerk.
Owning the mistakes makes apologizing for it remarkably easy. Correcting it even easier. All the hard stuff is out of the way as soon as you admit you made a mistake in the first place.
And when someone does that, they’re remarkably easy to forgive.
The Opportunity Machine 